Gaming
The top tips you need to raise your rank in competitive play mode.
As Overwatch’s competitive future becomes brighter and brighter, certain practices are emerging as the most efficient way of securing victory. With Misfits crowned the first Overwatch Open winners in ELeague’s $100,000 final last week, there’s a lot riding on knowing how best to tip the odds in your favour in competitive matches.
For most of us, there are only a few Skill Ratings on the line, but it doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the best. So here are some definitive tips to keep you rising through the ranks in Overwatch’s competitive play. Who knows, if you hit Top 500 maybe you’ll end up on the next team to qualify for the Open.
High ground
Competitive Overwatch is characterised mostly by a series of organised pushes through chokepoints and onto objectives which either succeed or fail.
The best chance of repelling a push is to firstly have the correct tools – which means team composition – and secondly to have the best positioning. Map design in Overwatch is varied enough to offer attackers multiple angles to the same area but often leaves a single position that defenders can have either an advantage or equal footing against all angles.
Most of the time, this position is on the high ground observing a choke point and the flanks. On Numbani, the upper balcony to the right of the point for defenders is prime real estate. Other maps have similar positions, such as the Courthouse/Church balcony on Dorado looking over the doorway from the square and Eichenwalde’s castle ramparts looking over what is essentially the same position.
High ground means healers can stay behind the lip, out of sight, while still healing DPS and tanks on the edge. It also means shooters can keep most of their body behind the lip while aiming over the precipice at attackers in full view below. High ground defences can be broken by a well-placed Pharah concussion shot knocking everyone off, unless Pharah can be dealt with while she positions herself above.
Know your counters
There are no real hard counters in Overwatch. No rock, paper, scissors heroes who automatically reduce your hero to a spectator slot. That said, there are several who are just smart to have in response to other heroes’ threats. Any large, damage-dealing ults are negated by stuns or damage absorption, giving you several different solutions to lots of problem scenarios.
Ana, McCree and Roadhog all have the ability to instantaneously stun enemies who are already doing their thing. So if there’s a Pharah, Reaper, Soldier: 76 or another Roadhog, you’ll always have the answer if you’ve got a stunner.
However, you can also neatly sidestep all of those ults with damage reduction or absorption, too. All Tanks have their own way of negating damage, but D.va’s Defense Matrix is the most effective, lasting almost the entire length of most ults.
Some heroes can't be so easily countered and pose a more general problem, such as being able to shred squishy supports near instantly. Most high-mobility DPS characters like Tracer and Genji are quite squishy themselves but have escapes that prevent you dealing with them before they deal with your Zen buddy, in which case keeping the Zen alive becomes the main method of countering them. Zarya, Lucio, Ana, anyone with single-target damage mitigation and heals, which is why it’s often quite important to follow a two DPS, two tank, two healer meta. But don’t be afraid to break the mold if you see a counter to exploit of your own.
There are no mains
If you’re queuing solo, take it as a given that no one is clicking on your hero profile and whistling and raising their eyebrows once they see how many hours you have as Hanzo. In general, your particular skill as one hero is outweighed by the team’s need for another. Talk together in set-up to get your composition right, as well as outlining some basic strategies and synergies that you can use so, when the time comes on the battlefield, things just click like you’ve all been playing together your whole lives.
However, if things aren’t clicking, perhaps you’ve got your composition wrong and don’t be afraid to call that out either – as long as you’re not pinning it on a single team-mate other than yourself. Switching to make use of those counters you know like the back of your hand is a big part of the game, but always try one last push to use your ult if it’s built above around 80 percent before switching. I mean, it’s already there and it might just change the tide, so why not?
Team pls
Everyone will say communication is important in ranked. “Communication is the key to victory,” they’ll tell you, with seeming ignorance as to the 6,500 spoken languages in the world and millions of pieces of information they can convey. The types of things you need to communicate that will improve your team's performance are things like potential angles of attack for the next push, positions of problem enemies and the status of your ultimate.
Luckily, your ult status is covered by a quick chat key, which you should definitely have bound for ease of use and will be translated into your team-mate’s language automatically! Magic! The other things you’ll need to say yourself, ideally through a microphone as typing can become troublesome unless you’re a sieged-up Bastion sitting on top of the payload, in which case keep it up buddy, you’re doing great!
Now, that last sentence is another important form of communication you’ll need to learn: positive encouragement, even if it’s a lie. You don’t have to compliment everyone all the time, but you do have to not complain about everyone all the time. Complain about an enemy that keeps killing you, sure, other people might feel the same way and be inclined to switch class and do something about them, but your team-mates don’t need any more reasons to tilt so don’t give them one.
Objectives are easier when defenders are dead
It might sound simple, but the underlying methodology is counter-intuitive for a lot of players in competitive. Everyone (hopefully) realises that Overwatch is an objective-based game and that winning the match depends very little on your K/D ratio. In the land of the disorganised, trigger-happy team, the sneaky Tracer pushing the cart onto the point is king. But what if your opponents aren’t disorganised?
At some point on your quest to Top 500, you’ll realise teams pay much closer attention to the announcements that the point is being capped. At this point the easiest way to take an objective is to wipe the team first. As a result, your goal as attackers is to kill the enemy team, and your goal as defenders is to stay alive. Do not chase kills as a defender, if you trade your life away it is disadvantageous due to the difference in time it takes for attackers to reach a point compared to defenders.
Obviously it’s still important to get the objective, but the more harm you do to defender numbers the easier that becomes, and that includes “staggering” their spawns. If not all of them die, they’ll likely try to regroup once everyone’s spawned (unless there’s a Mercy with ult nearby, in which case try to find and kill her before she swoops in with a timely rez). If your roaming DPS can pick off those few stragglers then they’ll have to wait for them to spawn too, or they’re going in with weakened numbers. And numbers advantages win games. Good luck.
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